League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian: Savez komunista Jugoslavije/Савез комуниста Југославије, Slovene: Zveza komunistov Jugoslavije, Macedonian: Сојуз на комунистите на Југославија, Sojuz na komunistite na Jugoslavija), before 1952 the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian: Komunistička partija Jugoslavije, Slovene: Komunistična partija Jugoslavije, Мacedonian: Комунистичка партија на Југославија, Komunistička partija na Jugoslavija), was a major Communist party in Yugoslavia. The party was founded as an opposition party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1919.
After initial successes in the elections, it was proscribed by the royal government and remained an illegal underground group until World War II; at times, it was harshly and violently oppressed. After the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1941, partisans led by Communists became embroiled in a War of National Liberation and defeated the Axis forces and their local satellites in a bloody civil war. After the liberation from foreign occupation in 1945, the party consolidated its power and established a one-party rule in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which lasted until the Yugoslav wars of 1991.
The party, which was led by Josip Broz Tito from 1937 to 1980, was the first communist party in power in the history of the Eastern Bloc that openly opposed the common policy as directed by the Soviet Union and thus was expelled from the Cominform in 1948 after Joseph Stalin accused Tito of nationalism and moving to the right. After internal purges, the party renamed itself the League of Communists and adopted politics of workers' self-management and independent communism, known as Titoism.
The party disintegrated in January 1990 on a congress of the party.
Read more about League Of Communists Of Yugoslavia: Founding, Period of Legal Activity, Split With The Centrists, Ban of The Communist Party, Underground Organization, National Question and Factional Strife, The Armed Revolt of 1929, Reconstruction of The Party, Tito's Early Leadership, Invasion and Armed Resistance, Ruling Party of Socialist Yugoslavia, Crisis and Dissolution, Remnants, Party Leaders, Ethnic Composition
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“He will deliver you from six troubles; in seven no harm shall touch you. In famine he will redeem you from death, and in war from the power of the sword. You shall be hidden from the scourge of the tongue, and shall not fear destruction when it comes. At destruction and famine you shall laugh, and shall not fear the wild animals of the earth. For you shall be in league with the stones of the field, and the wild animals shall be at peace with you.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 5:19-23.
“The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth in the fairgrounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the Liberals.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“International relations is security, it’s trade relations, it’s power games. It’s not good-and-bad. But what I saw in Yugoslavia was pure evil. Not ethnic hatred—that’s only like a label. I really had a feeling there that I am observing unleashed human evil ...”
—Natasha Dudinska (b. c. 1967)